


When The Colors Run Together

by Duck_Life



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Sparring, Squint All You Want But It's Still Platonic Because Alec Is Gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9463607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Alec and Clary try to talk about the terrible night Alec got possessed and Jocelyn died.





	

Alec and Clary aren’t the tightest. If Simon is her best friend, Isabelle is her gal pal and Jace is family, Alec falls in some gray area in between it all. He’s good at what he does and he’s easy enough to talk to, but they’re not that close, which is why it’s surprising when he knocks on her door at ten at night.

Especially considering that he killed her mother less than thirty-six hours ago.

“Hey,” Clary says, trying too hard to look normal. It should be the worst week of her life, but she’s having trouble feeling everything. She gets waves of anger and sadness, and then nothing. “What’s wrong?” Alec just stares at her, and she feels ridiculous, because what the fuck isn’t wrong? “I mean—”

“Do you want to spar?” he interjects, holding out one of the dull practice blades. “Sorry, it’s… late, but… do you want to spar?”

And, well, it beats sitting in her room and staring at the wall, trying to drown out her thoughts with deafening silence. “Yeah,” she says, and she follows him to the training room.

Sparring with Alec isn’t like sparring with Jace or Isabelle. With Jace, it’s cold and quick like a fast wind, whirling moves and hair flying everywhere. Isabelle moves like a bolt of lightning, everything around her electric and sizzling with energy.

Sparring with Alec is like trying to fight a heavy current, even as the dark water tries to pull you under. As they parry, Clary can’t miss the purple shadows beneath his eyes. She wonders if he’s even slept at all since it happened.

Alec’s blade clashes against hers and she ducks around him, thrusts, swivels on one heel. He may look tired but he isn’t fighting like it. He moves like he’s thrumming with adrenaline. Or maybe it’s anxiety.

Clary tries to dodge one of his blows but she’s not fast enough, and then he’s got her pinned. End of round one.

“Are you okay?” she asks him conversationally as they begin to go back and forth once more.

Alec clanks his blade against hers and then dances out of reach. “No.” He zips forward for another attack.

Izzy and Jace have thrown themselves into the hunt for Valentine, but Clary’s been floating, absent even when she’s standing right there. She feels like a ghost haunting the Institute, and for the first time she wonders if Alec feels the same way.

They fight. She beats him back and triumphs, this time, fake sword at his throat. Beaten, Alec looks at her and there’s something heavy in his eyes, something that reminds her of her mother when she spoke about Valentine, about the boy she called Jonathan.

It isn’t until they start up again that Clary identifies the thing she saw burning in Alec’s eyes— guilt. She swings for him and he blocks her and she tries again, feeling her shoulders strain as she repositions the blade over and over.

Again, Clary gets in a good hit, and then she knocks his feet out from under him and drops him to the mat, blade dramatically pointed toward his chin.

She’s about to make a joke about _Hamlet_ when she realizes that Alec’s crying.

And suddenly, it’s like the floor’s fallen out from under her. “Alec—”

“Hit me,” he says, sounding like a man at the gallows pleading for them to do it quick. “Hit me.”

Clary sinks to her knees beside him and he sits up, his eyes looking wild. “Alec, it’s okay.”

Rapidly, he shakes his head. “No, no, no, it’s not. It’s not okay.” His breaths come fast and shallow, like he really has been stabbed. “Just… just fight me, or hit me, or _do something_.” He’s a wreck, sinking beneath the surface of all his perceived sins. “Do something. Do something.”

She does. She leans forward and hugs him as tightly as she can. Alec’s lanky like Simon, but not as thin. And she can feel his heart hammering.

He breaks off the hug looking confused, so Clary breaks it down for him. “I know you didn’t kill Mom,” she says, eyes blooming with tears. “I know it wasn’t really you, and I know it wasn’t your fault.” She wipes stubbornly at her tears and braces herself with a hand on his shoulder. “I get angry, and I get sad. Sometimes I don’t feel anything at all. But I’m not upset with you. I don’t blame you. And you shouldn’t blame you, either.”

“I just…” Alec sighs, shifting awkwardly on the floor. “I wish I could stop thinking about it. About ‘what if I stopped it’ or ‘what if I had tried harder.’ I can’t stop… _thinking_ about it, Clary.”

She nods, and wonders what an onlooker would think of the two of them collapsed in the middle of the training room, crying. And honestly, she thinks no one would be surprised. “This shouldn’t have happened to you,” she swears. “Hell, it shouldn’t have happened to _anyone_. But I don’t want you to think… that it had to be you. That it was you for a reason, or whatever, because demons feed on our own emotions. Alec. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I saw it get away,” he says. “Before. When Lydia got hurt. I should have stopped it then.”

She opens her mouth to say something kind, something helpful that’ll keep the guilt from his eyes and the shadows from his face, but what comes out is “Alec, I can’t make it better!” She wonders if the look on his face is the same as the expression he’d have had if she had listened to him and hit him. “Look, I’m really sorry. A demon got in here, and it killed my mom, and it used you and that’s terrible. But _it killed my mom_.” Tears flood her eyes and pour down her face now, sad tears and angry tears and tears for no reason at all. “Possession… it’s _awful_. And I know you must be in a lot of pain. But I can’t make you okay because _I’m not okay_.” Even with the tears, she sounds commanding and serious, but it slowly evaporates. Clary crunches in on herself. “I just… I want my mom.”

And then it’s Alec’s turn to hug her, soft sweater and strong arms wrapped around her tight. She can imagine him holding Isabelle like this, on bad days, on sad days. “I’m sorry,” he says, and they’ve never been the best at communicating but she feels like for an instant, they finally understand each other. “Clary, I’m so, so sorry.”

Clary loses track of how long they sit there, clinging to each other like people lost at sea. Finally, she lifts away from him when an idea crawls into her head. “My mom used to…” But then she isn’t sure how to explain it. “I’ll just show you.”

They find an old white sheet and pin it up over a wall in the training room, and Clary brings all the paint she has from her room to the center of the mat. “It’s about expression,” she says, still clearing tears from her throat. “Everything you’re feeling goes into the paint and onto the sheet. Watch.” She squeezes a glob of green paint onto her hand and throws it at the sheet, where it splatters into a bright green starburst. “It’s better if you have buckets of paint— or water balloons— but this’ll do.”

Alec squeezes out paint cautiously, and then tosses it lightly toward the sheet. It leaves a small red splash. And, with more confidence, he tries again.

Clary keeps throwing paint at the wall. The orange-red of her mother’s hair, the pink of her skin, the mauve of her favorite sweater. She gets paint smudged on her chin and her arms, but she doesn’t care.

Alec throws red and red and red and red, until he finally switches to royal blue.


End file.
